RAG TIME AND TASTE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3052, 24 November 1908, Page 3

RAG TIME AND TASTE.

The degrading influence of ragtime music and the Directoire dress, a plea for beautiful schoolrooms, and the necessity of proper physical training for children were some of the subjects discussed at the closing meeting of the real Education Congress in London on Tuesday, September 29th, last. "The danger of rag time songs is that they cause disorganised, violent, and intemperate personalities," said Mr R. G. Boville, of the Vacation' Schools, New York. He testified to the good result of teaching children to sing songs of pure sentiment and beauty—old folk-songs ;and sample melodies. "It seems," he said, "that such songs have an influence on the •child's moral organisation through the vocal chords." Mr William Jolly, H.M. Inspector ■of Schools, pointed out that there is -no part of education that has been more neglected than the training ■of taste through the eye. "Neither the country as a whole nor educationists in general have , yet adequately realised the importance of aesthetic training as a •vital part of all true education. We •liave still to learn that, if we are to raise national taste and generate -arid cultivate a of the beautiful, this can only be adequately achieved by our schoolrooms, into which we gather our children so many precious . hours of the day. "For it is there alone that we have the resources for surrounding them • with pictures, paintings, sculptures, and other things of beauty, that will constantly and insensibly influence them for good, and gradually instil in them a love of the beautiful and the good that;will improvo national taste to an extent possible by no other means at our command." The moral effect of gymnastics as opposed to games was emphasised by Mr Eugene Sully, of the National Physical Recreation Society. "Very many games in themselves tend .to seliishness," he declared, "nor do they—unless under ideal and judicious supervision—make for discipline, for it is each for himself in stead of all for a common objective Boys and girls.fed physically on -games only from their youth up are -pretty sure to become selfish. "In the prssent day school games "are but too often made a business rather than a recreation, thereby losing their raison d'etre. The crcketer, for instance, playing only with his 'average' in view, is a sad -example, and such a practice should ibe strongly discouraged vast difference between games and athletics and scientific physical training is that in the former the stimulus comes from without, in the latter from within. The British people Jo not realise this allimportant difference; it they did, they would insist on every boy and girl (as ever-practical Germany does going to the gymnasium class two or three times a week."